concealed a third door.

His fingers touched the handle of this door and he managed to open it. He
gasped, "Help! Help!" and fell at his full length in a sort of cupboard
or closet which the Prefect of Police used as a dressing-room.

"To-night!" he moaned, believing that he was making himself heard and
that he was in the secretary's room. "To-night! The job is fixed for
to-night! You'll see ... The mark of the teeth! ... It's awful! ... Oh,
the pain I'm in! ... It's the poison! Save me! Help!"

The voice died away. He repeated several times, as though in a nightmare:

"The teeth! the teeth! They're closing!"

Then his voice grew fainter still; and inarticulate sounds issued from
his pallid lips. His mouth munched the air like the mouth of one of those
old men who seem to be interminably chewing the cud. His head sank lower
and lower on his breast. He heaved two or three sighs; a great shiver
passed through his body; and he moved no more.

And the death-rattle began in his throat, very softly and rhythmically,
broken only by interruptions in which a last instinctive effort appeared
to revive the flickering life of the intelligence, and to rouse fitful
gleams of consciousness in the dimmed eyes.

The Prefect of Police entered his office at ten minutes to five. M.
Desmalions, who had filled his post for the past three years with an
authority that made him generally respected, was a heavily built man of
fifty with a shrewd and intelligent face. His dress, consisting of a gray
jacket-suit, white spats, and a loosely flowing tie, in no way suggested
the public official. His manners were easy, simple, and full of
good-natured frankness.

He touched a bell, and when his secretary entered, asked:

"Are the people whom I sent for here?"

"Yes, Monsieur le Prefet, and I gave orders that they were to wait in
different rooms."

"Oh, it would not have mattered if they had met! However, perhaps it's
better as it is. I hope that the American Ambassador did not trouble to
come in person?"

"No, Monsieur le Prefet."

"Have you their cards?"

"Yes."

The Prefect of Police took the five visiting cards which his secretary
handed him and read:

"Mr. Archibald Bright, First Secretary United States Embassy; Maitre
Lepertuis, Solicitor; Juan Caceres, Attache to the Peruvian Legation;
Major Comte d'Astrignac, retired."

The fifth card bore merely a name, without address or quality of
any kind--

DON LUIS PERENNA

"That